I s our life on Earth simply part of a larger cycle of contraction and expansion?

Five panelists -- a doctor specializing in integrative medicine; an author who has written on meditation, death and dying; a specialist in neuroscience; a counselor who had his own near death experience; and a past-life regression therapist -- will offer up their perspectives Tuesday at the Boulder Public Library. The event is part of the Stahl Lecture Series sponsored by the Grillo Health Information Center in Boulder.

Embracing fear

Dr. Rohini Kanniganti, an ayurvedic specialist and medical doctor who works with geriatric homebound patients at House Call Physicians in Longmont, will speak on belonging to the cycles of nature.

"We are constantly going through dying and rebirth. Our bodies are regenerating themselves constantly," she says pointing out that we have no awareness that individual cells are growing and dying every day. "It has a sweet rhythm of its own," Kanniganti says.

The lesson in that, she says, is that in acknowledging and embracing these cycles as parts of our lives, we are able to befriend fear, even the ultimate fear -- death.

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She says about 10 to 20 percent of her patients are able to simply be in process as their lives are ending.

"In a strange way, though they are sad, though they are frightened, there's a way in which they're flowing with what is in that moment. They're not stuck in it," she says. They breathe.

Other families, however, hold their breath in fear, she adds. She defines this crucial part of her job this way: "How do I bridge? How do I get the wisdom of those families who are breathing to those families who are holding their breath?"

Even for those not facing an imminent death, embracing fear and seeing it as a part of being human and a part of life allows a person to reach beyond the most primitive parts of our brain, says Kanniganti, who likes to think of fear as a screaming child.

"(To be) a mother, to hold the screaming child, then we can wake up to what there is, to an infinite field of possibilities. Being stuck in fear keeps up stuck in a primitive reflex, unable to connect to wonderment and creativity. It's fully human to have both."

She says that coming to an understanding with fear is part of embracing the cyclical nature of life and death.

"I am convinced that my body will die, but that I as a spirit will be released like a perfume bottle breaking. All the perfume will be released everywhere."

Finding love

Counselor Robert Caplan, who specializes in life transitions including those of returning veterans, was in the Navy and working on an aircraft carrier in 1957 when he was sucked into the intake of the jet engine. He was dead and given last rites, something he saw from somewhere outside his body. He says his experience left him with these words: "I am the love that I seek."

As a child, he grew up in foster homes and boarding schools. He describes himself as "a lost little boy."

"I wanted to be part of a family and have security. I didn't have that," he says. "When I saw my body, I saw the totality of what my life was about, what my yearning was about. (I thought) the love I was looking for was outside myself."

His experience taught him to look within.

Seeing beyond

Andrew Holecek, an author on mediation, death and dying, as well as expert in lucid dreaming and a dental surgeon, says many people are so wedded to their physical form that they fail to see that dying is an opportunity.

"We're not physical beings. We're spiritual beings with a physical experience," he says.

Through meditation and other spiritual practices, Holecek believes it is possible to see in a clearer way.

"It's all death in slow motion," he says. "I started to realize I am swimming in an ocean of impermanence. My body is in constant flux. Everything in the external world is a dissolving impermanent reality."

Realizing that, he says, makes it easier to let things go.

"All my suffering in normal life, almost all of it is brought about by grasping and the inability to let go."

Many, but one

Lorell Frysh, a therapist who facilitates past life regressions and also teaches mysticism at Kabbalah Experience in Denver, says she will speak about western and eastern traditions, from the transmigration of souls mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible to Sufi ideas of reincarnation. The Sufi idea is that as souls leave this plane, they pass impressions from one to another. However, this interaction of souls takes place in the context of all souls being part of one.

"There is only one god. God takes many shapes and forms, but is essentially only one being," she says of the Sufi belief system.

However, the passing of impressions from one soul to another affects how we approach life.

"The soul is on this great journey, because it is growing, learning, expanding," she says. "The teaching as the soul becomes more conscious and aware, the choices are more in alignment with the greater good, bringing it toward wholeness.

Science and tradition

Also speaking will be Ilene Naomi Rusk of the Neurobehavioral and Brain Clinic. She will talk on the neuroscience of dying and how Jewish tradition sits with death.

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